What We May Be
by nicnac918
Summary: One year after the ceremonial duel, Bakura writes Marik a letter.


April 2, 1999

Marik,

I don't think you'll ever read this letter; I'm pretty sure you don't like me very much. Yugi says I'm being ridiculous because what possible reason could you have for hating me? But then, Yugi is always hopelessly optimistic when it comes to other people. (I make that sound like a bad thing, but it's not. It's one of my favorite things about him, even if I can't be that way anymore after everything that's happened.)

Whenever Yugi asks me that – what reason could you have for hating me – I can't remember anything. Of course, that's just the thing, isn't it? I can't remember anything about Battle City, which makes up the vast majority of the time that I, or rather my body, spent with you. (This isn't any reflection on you, which I'm sure you're aware of.) It's possible that during a brief moment of consciousness – I don't remember any of those, but I've heard if you wake up in the night for less than five minutes then you won't remember it in the morning, and I suppose it could be the same for possession – I actually did something horrible and your dislike is entirely justified. Or maybe the Spirit of the Ring did something and your dislike is understandable, if not exactly justified. Or maybe neither I nor the Spirit of the Ring did anything, and you just don't like me because you don't. That's okay too, you certainly aren't obligated to like me, and you'd hardly be the first person to dislike me for no reason.

At any rate, I promise I won't blame you or hold it against you if you throw this letter in the fire as soon as you get it. But even if getting this letter upsets you I won't apologize for sending it. I apologize for anything else I might have done, and I'll apologize on the Spirit of the Ring's behalf (I doubt I actually have the authority to do that, but if I don't, then there's no one else to, and someone really should), but I won't apologize for this. I think we all deserve at least one selfish thing after everything we went through with the Millennium Items, and this letter is mine.

I do hope you can read this letter, if you end up deciding that you want to. Your spoken Japanese is very good, but being able to speak a language and being able to read it are two entirely different things. I would have asked Yugi how he writes his letters to you, but I couldn't think of a way to do that without letting him know that I was writing you myself, which I didn't want to do; this letter is private. That is, it's private to me, but now that you have it, it and all its contents are yours, so feel free to tell Yugi about it. Or burn it to ash and never speak of it again, whatever you want.

I thought about writing in romanji, but I was afraid that you might think I was insulting your intelligence by implying you're incapable of reading kanji or even hiragana. And I would never want to do that; I think you are probably one of the smartest people I know, and I know both the Kaiba brothers, so that's not a compliment to take lightly. I also considered trying to write this letter in English, but I realized I don't have any real reason to believe that your English is any better than your Japanese, other that it seems a reasonable assumption given you ran a multi-national crime syndicate centered in large part around an American-based card game. (I hope you aren't upset I brought up the Ghouls; I didn't mean anything bad by it. In fact, even though I know you did a lot of bad things when you were involved with them and you aren't proud of any of the things you did back then, I hope you realize that you were able to do them at all is amazing and you can be proud of your abilities if nothing else. But you probably do know that; you have much more self-confidence than I do. It's one of the things I like best about you.) I even considered asking my Dad for help writing this letter in Arabic, but completely apart from wanting to keep this private, then I would have to explain to him about everything that happened with the Millennium Items, which seems like more trouble than it's worth now that everything is said and done. Of course, I would tell him the truth about it if he asked, even if I'm afraid he might feel guilty since he's the one who gave me the Ring in the first place, but he hasn't asked yet. (I don't think he's going to.)

You probably think I'm pretty silly right about now (actually, you're probably not reading this at all, but on the off-chance you are). I really did put a ridiculous amount of thought into the writing of a letter I don't even think is going to be read. But I suppose, in spite of everything else, I'm really hoping you do read this letter. I know I promised I wouldn't hold it against you if you don't, and I won't, but I do think I'll be upset. I'm not saying this to try to guilt you into reading this letter, or rather the rest of this letter at this point, I'm just trying to be honest.

Honesty is really important to me now. I mean, I always thought it was the better option when possible, but after the Spirit of the Ring, I always make sure to be honest. It's strange because in spite of all the other horrible things he did, in spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure he killed a number of people (I returned to awareness after Duelist Kingdom with Pegasus's Millennium Eye in my pocket and the taste of blood in my mouth), the first thing I think of when I think of him is a liar. He stole my face, my name, my body, my life, but he was a liar and I'm not. It's an important distinction. (I'm sure you have your own ways of dealing with things, but feel free to use mine as well. My understanding is that your other personality hated your siblings vehemently, especially Rishid. You, on the other hand obviously love them quite a lot. So the two of you can't be the same, because you're different.)

None of this is what I was writing to tell you. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I think I may have already mentioned that I was sorry for anything I or the Spirit of the Ring might have done to hurt you (aside from sending this letter, of course). Still, I only said it in passing, so it bears repeating: if there is anything I've done that you blame me for, and for everything that the Spirit of the Ring did to you, I apologize. But that's not the thing that I really wanted to say to you. Above all else, I hope you know that for everything that you did, deliberately or accidentally, directly or indirectly, that hurt me, that hurt the people I care about, and that hurt anyone else, I forgive you. If you only glance at this letter before destroying it, I hope that's the one sentence that catches your eye in that passing glance. I even thought about writing on the outside of the envelope, but I ended up deciding that I didn't want to share any part of this letter with anyone else before you had a chance to read it (or a chance to decide you didn't want to). Still, to be on the safe side, let me say it again:

I forgive you.

You should know, that even though this is the first time I've said it to you, I actually forgave you a long time ago. The first time I forgave you was right after the Battle City tournament, though I admit I only forgave you then because I thought you needed it at the time. Atonement is a difficult thing and sometimes the only way to become forgivable is to know that you're already forgiven. The second time I forgave you is when we went to Egypt for the duel between Yugi and the Pharaoh – Atem; after all the effort everyone went to to get his name back, it seems disrespectful not to use it. By then you seemed like you really did deserve it; you'd done what you could to turn the rest of the Ghouls in, and you were living your life trying to be a good person. I got the impression from Yugi that maybe you feel like you aren't doing enough to make up for what you've done in the past, (I hope you don't mind that've I've asked Yugi about how you're doing. If it you do, you can of course let Yugi know and he'll respect your privacy, as will I) but you shouldn't feel guilty about that. You've done what you can to fix your mistakes and beyond that, being a good person – the kind of person that doesn't hurt others if they can avoid it, and helps them when an opportunity presents itself – is all anyone has the right to ask of anyone else. Don't think your life has to be some kind of balance sheet of good deeds vs. wrong-doings. (And please don't let my comment discourage you if there really is something that you want to do to help others; you've already proven your greatness and goodness, if you put them both together I'm sure I would be nothing shy of stupendous.) I only didn't try to reach out to you before to tell you this because I didn't think forgiveness, or any kind of consideration at all really, was what you wanted from me. But now it's something that I need to do for my own sake.

This last year hasn't been easy for me. After so many years being possessed and manipulated and pushed back down to the deepest corners of my mind, I wasn't even sure who I was anymore. And on top of that, there was the guilt. Everyone tells me that I shouldn't feel guilty about what the Spirit of the Ring did, that he was possessing me and his actions were out of my control. I know that technically they're right, but knowing that doesn't make me feel less guilty any more than knowing that I've rid myself of a lying murderous parasite makes the inside of my head feel less lonely. And there are just so many reasons why I could blame myself. It was my body, surely there was something more I could have done, some way I could have fought harder against the Spirit's possession. Or the Ring, I could have given the Ring to Yugi for safe keeping after I first learned about the Spirit in it, despite the supernatural, obsessive hold it had on me. (Sometimes I think about the fact that the Spirit of the Ring had the ability to break off a piece of his soul and stick it into something else, so he could control that object. But not too often. There's only so much one person can be expected to bear.) And then there's the thing that keeps me up at night (well, one of the things).

Did you know that once, while he was in Yugi's body, Atem killed a man? A convict had escaped from prison and he had a gun. He ended up at the restaurant Anzu worked at, Yugi and Jonouchi were there at the time as well, and he held everyone there hostage, especially Anzu and Yugi. So Atem killed him; tricked him into burning himself alive. And there were others too. No one else that Atem killed, but a good number of people that got sent to the hospital or psychiatric care because they messed with Yugi or his friends. (I know I said that this letter and everything in it are yours to do with as you want, but please don't repeat any of that to anyone. It isn't a secret, but it is private. I'm only telling you because I know why Yugi told me, and I'm sure he wouldn't mind; he might have even told you himself already.)

But the thing is, all of that happened early on, most of it before Yugi even knew that Atem existed. As Yugi became aware of Atem and the two of them got closer, Atem stopped doing that sort of thing. He still did what he could to protect Yugi and his friends, but he didn't hurt others to do it anymore. As gruesome as it sounds, if you had come across Atem in his early days, I think he would have killed you. But instead he helped save you. (Helped, because while he and a lot of people did what they could for you, in the end you saved yourself Marik. Don't ever let yourself forget that.)

All of that makes me wonder, why could Yugi do that for Atem, but I couldn't for the Spirit of the Ring? Sure, the Spirit of the Ring was worse to start out with than Atem was, but why did he get even worse as time passed while Atem got better? Was it something that I did wrong? Was I just not a good enough person to be able to help redeem him the way Yugi was able to help Atem? I'm not saying that I don't think Yugi is a better person than I am, or that there aren't a lot of people out there who are better than me, but still. Knowing that maybe a lot of what happened wouldn't have had to if I had just been better, or had done something different, is hard.

Finally it occurred to me that, rather than trying to convince myself that I wasn't to blame, it might just be easier to forgive myself for anything I did, or failed to do. And the only way I was able to forgive myself, was to forgive everyone else that had a hand in what happened. Some people were pretty easy to forgive: you, Yugi and Atem, Zorc, and others were harder: Shadi, Pegasus, Akhenaden. The Spirit of the Ring was the hardest. (I know that from a purely objective perspective of what some of these people did and their motives for it, my groupings probably don't make sense, but not to judge my feelings objectively was probably one of the first things I learned with all this.) And regardless of how easy or not it was for me to forgive them most of the people involved are dead now, which meant I had to get a little creative with how to reach out to let them know (nothing very occult or at all dangerous, I promise). But I figured it all out eventually, and with this letter I am officially done. (Maybe it's a little silly to reach out last to the person I forgave first, but that felt right too.)

I think I said more than I really meant to with this letter. That is, I know it's a lot longer than I intended it to be and that a number of times I went on unnecessary tangents, but I also thinking I went a bit deeper than I realized I was going to. It's just that some of this I haven't told anyone before, except my little sister Amane, and it's a little different writing when there's a living person on the other end; I guess I got carried away. So, while I'm still not sorry I sent you this letter, I guess I am sorry for rambling, and for talking to you about things I didn't need to tell you and you didn't want to hear about. And I'm also sorry if me spending so much time talking about my problems made it seem like I was belittling what you've had to deal with. I know things haven't been easy for you either.

If you do end up reading this, and decided you want to write me back, that would be really great. But if you don't read it, or you read it, but don't feel like replying, that's okay too. I think I'm going to be fine now either way.

Your friend (because I will always be a friend to you, even if you don't want to be a friend to me),

Bakura Ryo


End file.
